Black Friday Guide 2023 (B2B): Tips, Best Practices, and Mistakes

There’s still time to fine-tune your online store’s Black Friday sales plan for the year, but the clock has started ticking.

With over $1.2 trillion in sales, the 2021 US holiday shopping season was the best in almost 20 years, representing an annual growth rate of 16.1 percent (YoY). According to EMarketer, $10.9 billion was spent online on Cyber Monday, up 1.1% from the previous year. This was followed by Black Friday’s $9 billion in sales.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the biggest shopping days of the year, and customers spent about $20 billion on these days in 2016. Therefore, online retailers must maximize their exposure and sales during this period with a Black Friday guide.

What preparations have you made for the impending spike in visitors and sales? Let us help you with our Black Friday Guide:

What is Black Friday?

Black Friday is the day following Thanksgiving in the United States and is commonly considered the unofficial start of the Christmas shopping season. Black Friday is a shopping holiday where many online and offline stores offer steep discounts on merchandise beginning at midnight on Thanksgiving Day.

Black Friday used to be a single day of in-store discounts. Because of the meteoric expansion of internet shopping, Cyber Monday deals were also introduced by online stores in 2005. Cyber Monday, like Black Friday, is the Monday after Thanksgiving and features online discounts.

Where Black Friday and B2B Meet

Ecommerce affects B2B buyer behaviour in the same way their B2C counterparts, as they gravitate toward digital self-service. According to McKinsey, 2/3 of Online shoppers prefer digital or remote in-person contacts.

Through the use of online marketplaces, a stronger focus on enhancing fulfilment, and an emphasis on a tailored customer experience, the B2B buyer perception isn’t much different from the B2C consumer journey.

These developments make Black Friday—traditionally an event for Business to consumers for B2B. Read on to look into Black Friday psychology, B2B’s fit in the ecosystem, and some of Black Friday’s best practices and frequent pitfalls.

Black Friday Marketing Strategies For Your Ecommerce Store

In e-commerce, Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year. It’s a chance to test fresh advertising and marketing strategies while capitalising on consumers’ heightened attention.

To help you prepare for Black Friday 2022, we have developed a list of marketing strategies you may use to increase traffic and sales through your online shop.

• Unify Physical (Sales Rep, Workshops) And Digital Channels

Think about the platforms that will be useful for your Black Friday promotion. To begin, find out where your target clients are. Will it be an online thing, or will physical stores also be involved? To do this, you’ll need to supply a wide range of assets that vary by channel while maintaining a consistent message.

• Run Deep For Black Friday Deals

Everything depends on your offer; this is the one occasion a year when you may reduce your pricing without feeling like you’re compromising the integrity of your business. No matter what, make sure your offer is enticing.

Using category-specific sales achieves several goals, such as:

• Increasing sales while maintaining greater margins

• Keeping website visitors and email subscribers interested for longer

• Assistance with improved inventory, ordering, and future promotions

• Start On A Small Scale And Expand Gradually

Make sure to conduct a thorough retrospective and document it beforehand because doing so will save time and relieve tension the next year. Second, businesses can decide the scope of their marketing, which is important if this is their first time participating in Black Friday.

Above all, initiating high-level Black Friday preparation in July or August will help all firms participating in the holiday season de-stress. Based on the preceding year, consider the following points:

• When should the marketing campaign be launched?

• Which marketing strategies were most effective?

• What goods were generating sales and consumer interest?

Businesses that are successful on Black Friday and Cyber Monday every year take the time to do a post-mortem. Examine overall performance, flaws, and successes in the weeks following Black Friday when the event is still fresh to continue improving.

• Go All-In On VIP Customers

Don’t be afraid to think big when offering promotions and discounts to your most loyal clients. As part of a Black Friday sales promotion, Baublebar issued the email below to their VIP customer list, giving 35% off all in-store purchases.

Klaviyo found that highly segmented VIP email lists often account for only 3% to 5% of your list. Still, those people typically spend three times as much per recipient as other customers in your database.

The example mentioned above capitalized on this psychological trigger by combining the exclusive nature of the offer with time-sensitive language (“12 Hours Only”) and a “Shop Now” CTA. Combined, these two strategies should generate substantial click-throughs and purchases from a single email blast.

• Put Together A Solid Plan

Businesses can benefit from best practices from other sectors and their Black Friday history.

Xoopah can help ensure the success of major international businesses on Black Friday and other peak shopping days.

Promotions should be spaced out over November, now known as “Black November.”

For your convenience, we’ve compiled a list of important upcoming events in 2022:

• The 11th of November is “Singles’ Day,” the busiest shopping day in China.

• Observance of the Thanksgiving Holiday: November 28

• On Friday, November 29th is Black Friday

• Sunday, December 2nd, is Cyber Monday

Send a letter to your MVCs announcing early access to your Black Friday deal right after Thanksgiving or whenever that is for your client base.

The most valuable customers (MVCs) are those who are already paying members of your community, who are vocal advocates for your brand, who have a high lifetime value (LTV), or who were among your first 1,000 customers.

You can make these emails seem more personalized with zero effort by using a platform like  Xoopah.

• Start Advertising Early

Advertisers on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram are launching their Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales earlier and earlier every year. This allows them to experiment and hone in on the most effective creative materials before the four-day shopping weekend.

Advertisements for Black Friday might grow tiresome for some consumers. As Black Friday has been advertised for over twenty years, consumers know its impending arrival.

However, this is not an excuse to abandon your promotional efforts altogether. In his essay, “Win the eCommerce Holidays with a Strong Customer Acquisition Strategy,” Nick Winkler discusses the latest seasonal advertising and how to optimize return on investment.

• Improve Your Website’s Navigation

Customers will explore your website more swiftly to find Christmas gifts if your site search capability is improved. Similar to how 70% of customers will leave a website due to a subpar on-site search and user experience.

Find a predictive search tool that provides the following before the Christmas rush:

• Real-time analytics: Unrestricted real-time analysis to assist you in understanding trends and performance.

• To keep clients almost twice as likely to convert when utilizing site search by providing them with quick, precise search results.

• Flexibility in storefront customization: To utilize search as a brand extension by managing the general search style.

Common Black Friday Pitfalls

1 – Overselling Stock

To prevent goods from being sold at a loss, it is important to keep track of prior sales data and make connections between it and the overall demand in the market. Develop a backup strategy in case supplies run out first.

The following are a few things to think about and cross off in advance:

• Determine stock movement on-site by observing how long an item remains in a basket. How soon does the stock leave the system?

• Check inventory levels to provide complete confidence; assess as near Black Friday as possible to prevent upsetting clients.

• Choose whether or not to change special prices that day.

• Take into account the anticipated buffer stock percentage.

• Indicate whether to change stock levels that day. Note: To maintain site stability, avoid emptying the cache.

2– B2B Campaigns For Black Friday Should Drive Action

Black Friday sales should be better than any other event, including weekly or monthly campaigns. Black Friday is about more than just deals for business-to-business transactions.

A retailer may provide a longer warranty on a product, or a consumer may be able to trade in the purchase of one service for a discount on a different service. Creative approaches to marketing holiday sales are welcome, but the bargains themselves must be compelling for buyers to make a purchase.

Key Takeaways

Have a fully functional e-commerce platform prepared for the year’s greatest shopping event? There’s no assurance your site will profit from the predicted increase in online Christmas sales.

To be successful on Black Friday, your business needs a comprehensive black Friday guide that covers every angle, from the responsiveness of your mobile site to the coordination of your online and offline marketing efforts to the logistics of your shipment and the possibility of stockouts.

We hope that Black November goes great for you, and we’re here to help with any last-minute queries you may have.